my heart feels like a ghost
by ahtohowhat
Summary: Elsa is an immortal spirit. Anna is not.


It's subtle, at first.

"Anna, is that..."

"...a grey hair? It kinda makes me nostalgic, you know. Remember my white streak?"

"...yeah. I do, Anna." Elsa tries to hide the trembling in her voice. _Is this the right thing? _echoes in the most treacherous, most human part of her mind._ You're free, now _comes to her rescue, and she holds onto that thought like a vice.

She leaves right after the game, Anna's bone-crushing goodbye hug still hot on her body. When she gets to a secluded place in the woods, her pit stop for the night, Elsa wonders what will come next.

—

Spirits have a different concept of time. Elsa enjoys learning so much new stuff, and time flies when you're having fun.

The scheduled Friday game nights become rarer and rarer. Arendelle looks like something from a different lifetime.

—

Sometimes, when Elsa thinks of Anna, she feels a pang in her chest. She's not sure why. This is what she's supposed to do, right? She was born to do this. It's her calling.

—

Elsa's visits to Arendelle become intermittent at best. She barely registers that what felt like a few days has been, in fact, a whole year.

Anna welcomes her with a smile. Elsa notices a few wrinkles and a couple of new grey hairs.

"I guess I'm the _older_ younger sister now," Anna chuckles. Her voice, still so light and carefree, is like music to Elsa's ears, and it reminds her how deeply she loves her. She smiles back, but somehow it doesn't reach her eyes. Anna doesn't notice.

—

Since charades night has been indefinitely dropped, Elsa's runs to Arendelle have dramatically scaled back. The world is just so vast, and the pull of the unknown and the freedom of exploring uncharted territories is too strong to resist.

"I understand, Elsa," Anna told her, reassuringly, a few months back. "I've always wanted you to be whatever you want to be. _Wherever_ you want to be. And besides, no matter where you are, we'll always be together _here_, right?", Anna says, pointing at her chest.

Elsa needs to believe her, and so she does.

—

Whenever Elsa meets Anna, at longer and longer intervals, she takes her time to notice the changes in her sister's appearance. Now, Anna sports new lines around her eyes and mouth and some more grey hairs. She still looks youthful and pretty, but...

Right then, Elsa finally sees it. Everything and everyone is changing around her and Anna is getting older before her eyes. Without her. The thought is so sudden and unsettling and _it wasn't supposed to be like this. I didn't really—_

Anna startles her out of her reverie. "So, you've finally come to see your little sister, huh? Don't tell me you're already got tired of little ol' me." Elsa can't pinpoint the exact moment, but for some reason, she began to resent their recurring joke.

"I mean," Anna rambles, "I know this must be _so_ utterly boring compared to what you normally get up to every day. Like, I would totally understand if you—"

Elsa cuts her off. She pulls her close and tries her best to ignore the garbled voice inside her head ("_is this really what you wanted?"_) by squeezing Anna harder and harder.

Anna lets out a short laugh, her warm breath tickling Elsa's ear. "Elsa, you're suffocating me! I'm not as young as—"

"Anna," she pleads. She pulls away, just a bit, and lightly strokes Anna's cheek with her knuckles. She brushes a lingering, feather-like kiss to the right corner of Anna's mouth, and it only lasts a few seconds, but Elsa swears she sees a faint blush on her sister's face. _She's so beautiful._

Elsa takes a deep breath, closes her eyes and rests her forehead on Anna's, who leans on her in turn.

"I love you," she hears her whisper. Elsa's heart swells.

"I love you, too."

She hasn't felt like this in a while.

—

Time is a blur.

—

A long time ago, Anna gave Elsa her blessing and support to follow her path without looking back.

"I'm going to be fine, I promise. I will do right by our people. And _you._"

But now, Anna is no more. Elsa can't muster up the courage to show up in Arendelle, so she stays in the glacier — her new home — unmoving, waiting, processing.

She learns from Gale that Anna's funeral was somber and quiet. In her past life, a life that now feels hardly hers, she would've never associated those words with her wild, carefree little sister.

Elsa wonders if things would've been different if she had been there. If she didn't leave out of her selfish desire.

But here she is, looking exactly as she did forty years ago, so young and impossibly gorgeous. And yet, the only person she truly, ever loved slipped away from her grasp. A sharp, dull ache courses through her body.

It's numb. _Maybe this is what real cold feels like._

_—_

An ice sculpture is conjured up right in the middle of her Elsa's new home.


End file.
